
June 26, 2025: The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that many key healthcare-related elements of Senate Republicans’ budget proposal, including prohibitions on Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care, caps on provider taxes in Medicaid expansion states, and various provisions to exclude immigrants from Medicare and Medicaid coverage, violate the Byrd rule. Senate Republicans must now revise their bill or disregard decades of legislative precedent and override the parliamentarian’s Byrd rulings.
Senate Republicans are finalizing their own version of H.R. 1, aka the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, a bill focused on funding tax cuts for the wealthy by gutting critical programs like Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid insures 72 million low-income and disabled Americans, while Medicare insures over 55 million people, primarily seniors.
Medicaid enjoys overwhelming bipartisan popularity. However, Senate Republicans’ budget proposal would make even deeper cuts to Medicaid than the House’s budget bill. The Senate proposal introduces broader Medicaid work requirements than the House bill, putting more people at risk of losing their coverage. The proposal also targets Medicaid expansion by capping provider taxes used to fund Medicaid in states that expanded Medicaid.
While Republicans have repeatedly promised to not directly cut Medicare, their megabill will also cause massive cuts to Medicare spending if the Senate bill does not reduce the bill’s impact on the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of the House budget bill concluded the House bill’s tax cuts for the wealthy would trigger $500 billion in automatic Medicare cuts due to “PAYGO”, a budget rule that requires any reduction in revenue to be offset by cuts in other areas of the budget.
Medicaid and Medicare are essential sources of health care coverage. Cutting these programs to make the rich even richer will devastate local economies and worsen health and wellbeing. Demand the Senate oppose proposed cuts to both programs.
Hello, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent from [CITY, ZIP].
I’m calling to urge [REP/SEN NAME] to oppose the Medicaid cuts proposed in both the House and Senate budget reconciliation bills and remove all provisions that violate the Byrd rule. These cuts will cause millions of people on Medicaid to lose access to health care while making Medicaid more expensive and complex to administer, all to fund tax breaks for the rich. I am also concerned that the bill’s impact on the deficit will trigger massive cuts to Medicare, a lifeline for America’s seniors.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
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